Sevastopol Page 2

you. Trust not to the feeling whichdetains you upon the threshold of the hall; be not ashamed of havingcome to _look at_ the sufferers, be not ashamed to approach and addressthem: the unfortunates like to see a sympathizing human face, they liketo tell of their sufferings and to hear words of love and interest. Youwalk along between the beds and seek a face less stern and suffering,which you decide to approach, with the object of conversing.

  "Where are you wounded?" you inquire, timidly and with indecision, ofan old, gaunt soldier, who, seated in his hammock, is watching you witha good-natured glance, and seems to invite you to approach him. I say"you ask timidly," because these sufferings inspire you, over and abovethe feeling of profound sympathy, with a fear of offending and with alofty reverence for the man who has undergone them.

  "In the leg," replies the soldier; but, at the same time, you perceive,by the folds of the coverlet, that he has lost his leg above the knee."God be thanked now," he adds,--"I shall get my discharge."

  "Were you wounded long ago?"

  "It was six weeks ago, Your Excellency."

  "Does it still pain you?"

  "No, there's no pain now; only there's a sort of gnawing in my calfwhen the weather is bad, but that's nothing."

  "How did you come to be wounded?"

  "On the fifth bastion, during the first bombardment. I had just traineda cannon, and was on the point of going away, so, to another embrasurewhen _it_ struck me in the leg, just as if I had stepped into a holeand had no leg."

  "Was it not painful at the first moment?"

  "Not at all; only as though something boiling hot had struck my leg."

  "Well, and then?"

  "And then--nothing; only the skin began to draw as though it had beenrubbed hard. The first thing of all, Your Excellency, _is not to thinkat all_. If you don't think about a thing, it amounts to nothing. Mensuffer from thinking more than from anything else."

  At that moment, a woman in a gray striped dress and a black kerchiefbound about her head approaches you.

  She joins in your conversation with the sailor, and begins to tellabout him, about his sufferings, his desperate condition for the spaceof four weeks, and how, when he was wounded, he made the litter haltthat he might see the volley from our battery, how the grand-duke spoketo him and gave him twenty-five rubles, and how he said to him that hewanted to go back to the bastion to direct the younger men, even if hecould not work himself. As she says all this in a breath, the womanglances now at you, now at the sailor, who has turned away as thoughhe did not hear her and plucks some lint from his pillow, and her eyessparkle with peculiar enthusiasm.

  "This is my housewife, Your Excellency!" the sailor says to you, withan expression which seems to say, "You must excuse her. Every one knowsit's a woman's way--she's talking nonsense."

  You begin to understand the defenders of Sevastopol. For some reason,you feel ashamed of yourself in the presence of this man. You wouldlike to say a very great deal to him, in order to express to him yoursympathy and admiration; but you find no words, or you are dissatisfiedwith those which come into your head,--and you do reverence in silencebefore this taciturn, unconscious grandeur and firmness of soul, thismodesty in the face of his own merits.

  "Well, God grant you a speedy recovery," you say to him, and you haltbefore another invalid, who is lying on the floor and appears to beawaiting death in intolerable agony.

  He is a blond man with pale, swollen face. He is lying on his back,with his left arm thrown out, in a position which is expressive ofcruel suffering. His parched, open mouth with difficulty emits hisstertorous breathing; his blue, leaden eyes are rolled up, and frombeneath the wadded coverlet the remains of his right arm, envelopedin bandages, protrude. The oppressive odor of a corpse strikes youforcibly, and the consuming, internal fire which has penetrated everylimb of the sufferer seems to penetrate you also.

  "Is he unconscious?" you inquire of the woman, who comes up to you andgazes at you tenderly as at a relative.

  "No, he can still hear, but he's very bad," she adds, in a whisper. "Igave him some tea to-day,--what if he is a stranger, one must still havepity!--and he hardly tasted it."

  "How do you feel?" you ask him.

  The wounded man turns his eyeballs at the sound of your voice, but heneither sees nor understands you.

  "There's a gnawing at my heart."

  A little further on, you see an old soldier changing his linen. Hisface and body are of a sort of cinnamon-brown color, and gaunt as askeleton. He has no arm at all; it has been cut off at the shoulder. Heis sitting with a wide-awake air, he puts himself to rights; but yousee, by his dull, corpse-like gaze, his frightful gauntness, and thewrinkles on his face, that he is a being who has suffered for the bestpart of his life.

  On the other side, you behold in a cot the pale, suffering, anddelicate face of a woman, upon whose cheek plays a feverish flush.

  "That's our little sailor lass who was struck in the leg by a bomb onthe 5th," your guide tells you. "She was carrying her husband's dinnerto him in the bastion."

  "Has it been amputated?"

  "They cut it off above the knee."

  Now, if your nerves are strong, pass through the door on the left.In yonder room they are applying bandages and performing operations.There, you will see doctors with their arms blood-stained above theelbow, and with pale, stern faces, busied about a cot, upon which, witheyes widely opened, and uttering, as in delirium, incoherent, sometimessimple and touching words, lies a wounded man under the influence ofchloroform. The doctors are busy with the repulsive but beneficentwork of amputation. You see the sharp, curved knife enter the healthy,white body, you see the wounded man suddenly regain consciousness witha piercing cry and curses, you see the army surgeon fling the amputatedarm into a corner, you see another wounded man, lying in a litter inthe same apartment, shrink convulsively and groan as he gazes at theoperation upon his comrade, not so much from physical pain as from themoral torture of anticipation.--You behold the frightful, soul-stirringscenes; you behold war, not from its conventional, beautiful, andbrilliant side, with music and drum-beat, with fluttering flags andgalloping generals, but you behold war in its real phase--in blood, insuffering, in death.

  On emerging from this house of pain, you will infallibly experiencea sensation of pleasure, you will inhale the fresh air more fully,you will feel satisfaction in the consciousness of your health, but,at the same time, you will draw from the sight of these sufferings aconsciousness of your nothingness, and you will go calmly and withoutany indecision to the bastion.

  "What do the death and sufferings of such an insignificant worm as Isignify in comparison with so many deaths and such great sufferings?"But the sight of the clear sky, the brilliant sun, the fine city, theopen church, and the soldiers moving about in various directions soonrestores your mind to its normal condition of frivolity, petty cares,and absorption in the present alone.

  Perhaps you meet the funeral procession of some officer coming from thechurch, with rose-colored coffin, and music and fluttering banners;perhaps the sounds of firing reach your ear from the bastion, but thisdoes not lead you back to your former thoughts; the funeral seems toyou a very fine military spectacle, and you do not connect with thisspectacle, or with the sounds, any clear idea of suffering and death,as you did at the point where the bandaging was going on.

  Passing the barricade and the church, you come to the most lively partof the city. On both sides hang the signs of shops and inns. Merchants,women in bonnets and kerchiefs, dandified officers,--everything speaksto you of the firmness of spirit, of the independence and the securityof the inhabitants.

  Enter the inn on the right if you wish to hear the conversations ofsailors and officers; stories of the preceding night are sure to be inprogress there, and of Fenka, and the affair of the 24th, and of thedearness and badness of cutlets, and of such and such a comrade who hasbeen killed.

  "Devil take it, how bad things are with us to-day!" ejaculates the bassvoice of a beardless naval officer,
with white brows and lashes, in agreen knitted sash.

  "Where?" asks another.

  "In the fourth bastion," replies the young officer, and you arecertain to look at the white-lashed officer with great attention, andeven with some respect, at the words, "in the fourth bastion." Hisexcessive ease of manner, the way he flourishes his hands, his loudlaugh, and his voice, which seems to you insolent, reveal to you thatpeculiar boastful frame of mind which some very young men acquireafter danger; nevertheless, you think he is about to tell you how badthe condition of things on the fourth bastion is because of the bombsand balls. Nothing of the sort! things are bad because it is muddy."It's impossible to pass through the battery," says he, pointing athis boots, which are covered with mud above